Britt snatched away the paper and tore it up.
“Get into that hovel and look after your horses.” But when Tommy turned to go his employer called him back. “I’ve got another job for you just now, you snake-chaser. You need to chew fresh air, and you’ll find a lot of it on top of Jerusalem. I don’t know just how much you understood of our business in the wangan camp last night, Eye, and I don’t care. You know me well enough to understand that if you ever blab any of it I’ll have your ha’ slet out of you!” Tommy cringed under a furious glare. “It will depend on how well you do an errand for me now whether or not I feed you to bobcats. You get that, do you?”
Again the teamster bowed his wistful assent.
“I wish I hadn’t let Sheriff Rodliff and his men leave,” remarked Britt to “Stumpage John,” eying Tommy with some disfavor. “But perhaps this fool can do the trick better than a sheriff’s posse. Sending the posse might make talk and stir suspicions.”
“The quieter it’s done the better,” suggested Barrett. “After my talk with Wade—which was pretty soft, as I remember it—it will seem natural for me to send after the girl—and by just such a messenger as this.”
“So we’ll send the fool—you’re right!” affirmed Britt. “Tommy,” he directed, wagging a thick finger under the man’s attentive nose to mark his commands, “you hump up to that fire station on Jerusalem as quick as leg-work will get you there, and you’ll find a young girl. There are not enough young girls up there so that you’ll make any mistake in the right one. You tell the one that’s in charge, or whoever claims to be in charge, that the girl has been sent for. You’ll probably find that fellow Dwight Wade takin’ the responsibility. Tell him that it’s all right, and that the gentleman he made the talk with is prepared to back up all promises. Bring the girl back with you.”
“Girls was never much took with me, and I never was handy in makin’ up to girls,” protested Tommy, his face puckering in alarm. “She prob’ly won’t come, and then I’ll get kicked again.”
“You’ll get kicked again mighty sudden if you don’t do as I tell you, and do it quick and do it right!” roared Britt, starting off the camp platform. And Tommy, cowed by his tyrant, stood not upon the order of his going. He was trotting with a dog-waddle when he disappeared up the Jerusalem trail.
“He ought to be back by noon,” said Britt. “In the mean time we’ll eat breakfast and then cruise for blowdowns. And I’m thinkin’ it isn’t goin’ to be a very humorous forenoon for timber-land owners.”
Nor was it. Dolefully and silently they traversed wastes of splintered devastation, blocked ram-downs, choked twitch-roads, and hideous snarls of cross-piled timber.